Medusa in the Graveyard (The Medusa Cycle)

by Devenport, Emily

  Kitten dashed into the room so fast, when she stopped, she skidded on the smooth floor. “What the what?!” she said.

  “There you are!” said Birdie in Standard, and she turned back to me. “Bringing Kitten here was the best way to keep her out of the business of the southern gods. I don’t have to tell you—they’re a bit mercurial.”

  “I was sitting on you,” said Kitten, “and I don’t blink my eyes, but if I did blink my eyes, that’s literally how long it took for me to be in another room, and you were gone, Oichi, but then I heard your voices in the next room, so I came in here, and there you are, but are you going to disappear again, or am I free to move about the cabin?”

  “No more disappearing,” Birdie assured her. “You may explore the cabin.”

  Kitten trotted to the center of the room. “Hello, Big Sister!” she said to Medusa.

  Medusa smiled at her. “Hello, Little Sister.”

  “Is Dragonette here, too?”

  “The Rock Elves are looking after her. Come along, you two—I believe Ashur is about to petition the Three. Let’s go cheer for him. Stay close, now.” Birdie got up and began to walk toward the solid wall at the far end of the room. “Just let me get my parasol.”

  Birdie snagged a long thing made of fabric and wood. She pushed a button at one end, and the thing opened up like the petals of a flower. “My parasol,” explained Birdie. “Direct sun is uncomfortable on my skin. Ready?”

  I looked at Medusa. “You’re not coming, too?”

  “No,” she said. “My presence might distract the Three when Ashur is trying to make his case. I don’t want to do that for even a moment.”

  She still had no smile for me. At least now, I had some idea why. “Have you been here the whole time?”

  “No. I’ve been here about an hour.”

  “Was that you I saw going into the Sentinel?”

  “Yes, but we don’t have time to talk about it now, Oichi. Birdie is going. Join her.”

  Kitten rushed over to me and wrapped herself around my waist. “I’m not taking any chances!” she said.

  Placing my hands protectively around Kitten, I followed Birdie, who looked like she was going to collide with that wall. When she reached it, the wall rippled like the surface of a pool, and Birdie walked right through it, parasol and all.

  “I hope that happens for us, too,” said Kitten.

  I paused and looked back. “Medusa—am I ever going to see you again?”

  “From my perspective,” she said, “I’m going to see you a lot sooner than you’re going to see me.”

  That was going to have to do. I turned back to the seemingly solid wall.

  “Geronimo,” I said, and together, Kitten and I took the plunge.

  * * *

  We emerged in Seaside Canyon. I’m not sure where Birdie’s house had been—on another world?—but we were back on Graveyard. Judging from the temperature and the position of the sun, we had arrived in the early morning, which meant that my day was starting all over again, and that seemed terribly unkind.

  Birdie waited under her parasol a short distance away, and next to her a tall man stood, wearing a suit very much like the one I had seen on Timmy and Argus Fabricus. Something perched on his finger. He turned to look at us, and I remembered Cocteau’s description of the Rock Elf who had rescued her colleague.

  They looked much like us, except that they were taller and thinner. They had wide shoulders and features that seemed elongated compared with ours.…

  That was an excellent description of the man who had been waiting for us in Seaside. The little creature who perched on his finger demanded our attention.

  “Dragonette!” cried Kitten.

  “Kitten!”

  “Dragonette!”

  “Kitten!”

  “I’m running out of happy exclamations!”

  “I’m so glad to see you!” Dragonette flew to us and hovered in front of her friend’s nose. “Ernie told me I would, but I felt very anxious.”

  “Ernie?” I regarded the Rock Elf skeptically. “As in the Ernie Sandstone?”

  “No,” he said, “that’s just a happy coincidence, Miss Kick-Butt.”

  “Does everyone call me that?” I asked Birdie.

  “It’s not the worst nickname you could have,” she said. “You have to admit, it’s accurate.”

  I eyed the Rock Elf who had volunteered to look after Dragonette, and I remembered something else Cocteau had told me.

  He was almost the same color as the rocks in that area, sort of a dark blue-gray.

  Maybe so, but there was one other person I had seen with skin like Ernie’s: Cocteau.

  No one is entirely anything, these days.…

  When we had arrived, Ernie and Dragonette were gazing toward the Three. I was relieved to see them back where (and when) they belonged. “Now all we have to do is retrieve Ashur and Ahi,” I said.

  “Soon,” promised Birdie. “Ashur is about to petition the Three.”

  I shook my head. “I should be there. He can’t take on that responsibility by himself.”

  “He has the right stuff,” said Ernie. “That’s why the entities wanted him here. You should remember that he impressed the Three once before—with his Mermaid program.”

  I didn’t ask who had told him that. “He scared them,” I said. “They started to withdraw after that.”

  “Why do you suppose they did that?” demanded Ernie.

  At the time, I had wondered if Ashur frightened them because they thought they could love him. If they loved him, and they woke, they might remember who else they had loved, and who they had lost. I had seen how that might affect the Three when I saw how it affected Medusa.

  I had also seen the Three the way they saw themselves, and it had scared the hell out of me. If I couldn’t handle them, how could someone half my age? “You’re asking too much,” I said.

  “I’m not the one who’s asking,” said Ernie.

  I gazed at the Three. Would they show mercy to Ashur? Did they even have that choice, once they started to wake?

  Do you think this thing you want to do is the best you have to offer? Ahi had asked Ashur when they stood before the Three.

  Yes. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s way better than anything else I could say or do.

  “So—he’s going to play his Mermaid program for them,” I said. “It’s beautiful. The music is by Claude Debussy.”

  Then I remembered the other thing Ashur had been working on, also with music by Debussy, as arranged for synthesizer by Isao Tomita. “Or,” I said, “he might—”

  The opening notes of Tomita’s electronic arrangement of The Sunken Cathedral began to play—but not just inside my head. I could hear it in the air around me, as if the canyon were a giant synthesizer, as if each spire and butte were playing a different part of the music, weaving it together into a whole. Sonorous and bright in turns, the music evoked images of undersea canyons, schools of fish, barrier reefs, and the sunken ruins of a church, its bell sounding in the depths.

  The entire graveyard resonated along with the tones of that undersea bell, but especially Seaside. The light shifted and began to bend, as if we stood at the bottom of a shallow sea, with the sun shining through blue water and glistening on the surface of ships that looked like seashells, and when the cathedral began to rise from the depths, and the voice of a celestial chorus to sing along with the intonation of that bell, my heart seemed to grow bigger in my chest.

  I hadn’t remembered the chorus being so magnificent, so—grand. Isao Tomita’s rendition was electronic, the voices synthesized. Had Ashur added something to it? Had he enhanced that music, or …

  No, Ashur hadn’t done it. The ships in the graveyard were doing it—all of them, from one end of Joe’s Canyon to the other, from the Three to the ships of Seaside to the Misfit Toys beyond Evernight to the Sentinels who stood among the catwalks in the yard, even to Merlin and the other youngsters who sat in Port One—all o
f them joined that celestial chorus. All of them sang along with the bell of the Sunken Cathedral.

  I wished my father could hear this. Why would he hide the Medusa interface inside a music education program? people had sometimes asked me. It’s just a bunch of music.

  Music is language. My father understood that. Ashur had just used it to speak to every ship in the graveyard. More important, he had used it to get them to talk back. Ashur was exactly the sort of kid my father had wanted to inspire, and now they had both succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

  The Sunken Cathedral sank beneath the waves again with the concluding notes, its bells still sounding distantly, softly, until it was gone. The graveyard fell silent again.

  I pulled in a slow breath, unwilling to break that silence—and when I let it out again, three ghosts stepped between the seashell spaceships and joined us in our clearing.

  The Three regarded me with far more affection than I had seen from them before.

  “Are you awake?” I said, awed by the idea.

  “No,” said Gennady’s ghost. “Like the Sunken Cathedral, we remain mostly submerged.”

  Mostly—yet not so much as they were before. “You remember me,” I said. “Do you remember anyone else? A certain grandmother witch?”

  “We never forgot her,” said Gennady’s ghost. “Long ago, we told her that this outcome was possible. We calculated she was the best recipient of the information we were permitted to share at the time. She did not disappoint us—and neither did you.”

  Good news, but I had my priorities. “Where are Ashur and Ahi?”

  “They’re coming,” said the ghost of Lady Sheba. “We thought they should do a little walking. It will prepare them for your reunion.”

  That regal lady still sounded like her namesake, except that no trace of malice tempered her tone. Honestly, if we could find a way to substitute her for the real one, it might be very useful.

  “If Ashur was the one you wanted to talk to all along,” I said, “why was I invited?”

  “There were a few things you had to do,” said the ghost of my mother, her face still obscured by the curtain of her hair, save for one fathomless eye. “Things and people who needed to be moved here and there—and here and then.”

  Queenie, for one.

  “You are tired,” said my mother’s ghost, “and we are making adjustments. Our directory will interface with your Gates.” She paused, regarding me with that single eye. “We have missed you, Oichi.”

  They vanished from that landscape. Simultaneously, three new icons appeared in my directory. Behind each icon, I could feel a looming presence, powerful and aware.

  “Well!” Birdie twirled her parasol. “That’s our cue. You have a reunion to conduct.” She and Ernie linked arms.

  “Lovely to meet you, Dragonette,” said Ernie.

  Before they could take a step, I said, “You taught me your language, Birdie.”

  They paused.

  “I don’t think you did it just so we could have one conversation.”

  Birdie smiled. “You’re right. See you later, Oichi.”

  The bulkhead next to them rippled, and they walked through it.

  “I have to admit,” said Kitten. “That’s hard to get used to.”

  Dragonette fluttered her fins. “Right? Transdimensional-interplanetary-gate thingees.”

  We heard voices. Someone emerged from the limestone tunnel. I couldn’t restrain myself. “Ashur!”

  I didn’t quite run, but it was close enough. Kitten absolutely did run; she threw herself at Ashur and wrapped herself around his waist.

  Dragonette zoomed at him like a dive-bomber and executed a perfect landing on his shoulder. She pressed her head against his cheek. “Your Sunken Cathedral was amazing and fabulous!” she declared.

  He grinned. “You heard it?”

  “Everyone heard it,” said Kitten. “You got a standing ovation.”

  Ahi’s eyes shone with pleasure. “Our story has a happy ending. I thought it would, but I didn’t want to give it away.”

  “So”—Ashur patted Kitten—“what now?”

  I shrugged. “We walk home.”

  “Oh.” Ashur sounded a bit crestfallen.

  Ahi punched him in the arm. “We’re alive. We have Oichi and the Minis back. We have—” She patted her pockets. “—a few protein bars. What more do we need?”

  “Water.” I unhooked my canister, but as soon as I hefted it, I could tell it was full. “Small miracles.” Happy reunions aside, I didn’t spare them another look until I had taken a long pull from that bottle. When I had finished, I found Ashur and Ahi doing the same.

  Seaside had done us another good turn. Yet I stayed close to Ahi and Ashur, Kitten and Dragonette as we walked to the other end of the tunnel. The Minis and the children, I thought. Without them, the graveyard would have let me die, once I stopped being useful.

  Well, what the hell. No point in taking it personally. After all, in this company, I was the killer. I was the one who needed learn how to live. Maybe I had just received my first lesson.

  I followed them into the light.

  On the other side, we stood blinking on the path, trying to make sense of our surroundings. A walking tree stood right outside the tunnel, as if waiting to point the way. His brethren were scattered across the sandstone slope, their line stretching all the way back to the canyon with the Klaatu spaceships—the one we had walked through on our first day.

  “Well,” Ahi said. “I did not see that coming.”

  * * *

  I suppose I had no business complaining about it, but the trip back to the Last Sentinel was uphill. Ashur worried when he saw me lagging. My little rest at Birdie’s had helped, but it should have lasted a lot longer.

  “What happened after we got separated?” said Ashur. “How did you get those bruises?”

  I decided to tell him the truth. “I ran into Sheba and one of her poachers.”

  Ashur considered the marks on my neck. “Are they dead?”

  “The poacher is.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m guessing he needed to be.”

  “He was worse than the other two we met,” I said, but didn’t elaborate.

  Ahi kicked a rock out of our path. “So what happened to Sheba?”

  “She’s the one who killed the poacher.”

  They weren’t so surprised by that news as I had expected them to be. Finally Ashur said, “That’s got to be an interesting story.”

  Maisy’s Pool welcomed us, a few hours later. We refilled our bottles and nibbled from our protein bars. Kitten and Dragonette cavorted around the puddles. “The wigglies are still in here,” reported Kitten. “Maybe their tails are a little longer.”

  I wondered if they were the same crop of creatures we had seen on the way in, considering all the time fractures we had been through. I felt encouraged by their lack of development. Maybe we had been only a few days, after all—not months, or years, or centuries.

  Dragonette joined me at one of the little side pools and perched on my shoulder. “I’m assuming we shouldn’t use our brain implants to speak yet.”

  I glanced at Ahi and Ashur. They were filling their bottles at the large pool, joking with each other about falling in. Dragonette’s voice had been pitched too low for them to hear. “What’s up?” I said at the same volume.

  “I’m concerned about the last part of the Sentinel’s message,” said Dragonette. “Prosper! Oichi, where is the cannon?”

  Kitten trotted over. “That whole prosper thing sounds pretty good,” she whispered.

  Dragonette folded her fins. “What if someone is pointing a cannon at us?”

  She was turning out to be quite the little Medusa on this trip, thinking about all the unhappy possibilities.

  “I don’t think it’s here,” whispered Kitten. “The cannon.”

  I glanced at the youngsters again. They were having such a good time. I didn’t want to spoil that. “Why not?” I said.
r />   “My impression at the time was that it wasn’t something the Sentinel wanted you to know. It was something she wanted you to tell her.”

  I gave that a good, long think. “I have no idea where it is.”

  “Yet,” said Kitten.

  I can’t say I’m an expert on cannons, but my mind began to entertain thoughts of giant guns spewing destructive missiles. Maybe death rays. Giant death rays obliterating cities. Why couldn’t it just be a water cannon? Why, for once in our lives, couldn’t it be something harmless?

  “I doubt we’re going to get killed on our way out,” I said. “Too many entities are looking after us. I vote we postpone our paranoia until we’re on our way back to Olympia.”

  Dragonette fluttered her fins. “Me, too.”

  “Me, three.” Kitten stuck a paw into the pool. “These wigglies are much calmer than the koi.”

  Ahi and Ashur stood and smiled at us. “Everyone got water?” said Ahi.

  I raised my bottle. “And then some. My stomach is making full-of-water noises.”

  Ahi grinned. “Full tank. All right, then—let’s go visit our friend, the Last Sentinel.”

  “Do you think it will talk to us again?” said Kitten.

  Ahi looked at me, then at Ashur, as if assessing our Sentinel-attracting aptitudes. “I doubt it. That seems like overkill.”

  Kitten gave the wigglies one last dab. “Even without the cannon.”

  * * *

  The Last Sentinel waited for us by the Maisy River. I took care not to touch her, and nothing swooped at us. We labored through the piled-up sand on the upriver side, and plodded onward (also upward, unfortunately). Maisy rushed past us, swollen from recent rainwater, oblivious to the danger of time fractures.

  “Ahi,” I said, “has anyone ever tried to take a raft down Maisy from one end to the other?”

  She looked out over the water. “Yes. A team from the first colony did it.”

  “Did they get to the other end?”

  “Not yet.”

  I considered a few permutations of that answer. “You mean—they’re still doing it?”

  “I’ve spotted them a few times. They’re always a little farther downriver. I’m guessing they’ll get to the end eventually. I hope it won’t be in a million years. Maybe one day we can throw a party for them.”